


cursing my name, wishing I stayed.

by thearkdelinquents



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Professors, Teacher Gilbert, Tears, so many tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:27:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27293416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thearkdelinquents/pseuds/thearkdelinquents
Summary: Happy Halloween.
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 10
Kudos: 56





	cursing my name, wishing I stayed.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween.

Unsurprisingly, she visits him on his very first day of work. He is nervous as it is, itching to meet the students, but scared he is out of his depth. Seeing Anne helps, and it doesn’t. Her presence is a dichotomy. Calming and nerve-racking all at once. But that is a feeling he has known for a long time. It’s almost comforting to him in its own way, to feel that familiar ache in his gut.

He feels her in the room before he sees her, another effect she. He turns away from his post facing the empty blackboard, and back towards the hat room, new in construction, but still in the same place as when they were children. He is taken aback at first, the juxtaposition of present Anne standing where past Anne had stood so many times before. He had watched her walk through that doorway, all fire and wonder, through stolen glances when they were children. Then, as he got older, he was more obvious, more forward with his stares, daring her to notice and mention it. She never did.

Now, though, she does notice. Or at least, she doesn’t pretend not to. When their eyes meet across the classroom she is already smiling, eyes so reminiscent of the girl before.

“So, Mr. Blythe, what do you have planned for your students today?”

She breezes past him to look down at the papers he has spread across his desk, eyes scanning. Gilbert just stares at her for a second, the shock of seeing her here making him pause. Eventually, he smiles at her choice to skip the pleasantries and get straight to business.

“Well since I have the older children this year I was hoping to start them off with something fun, so they won’t hate me in a month,” he says, looking back down at his scrawled notes.

“Highly unlikely they would,” Anne replies, still reading. “You have a way of making everyone love you. Even the ones who swore to hate you.”

She looks up at him then, a faint smile on her lips.

A boyish grin plasters across his face then, “You would know, Carrots.”

She rolls her eyes at the schoolyard insult-turned-endearment, but the smile never leaves her face.

“I’m thinking of starting with a play,” Gilbert continues, placing the book in front of her. “Easy to follow, allows them to get familiar with each other and have fun while still learning.”

“Hamlet…” Her eyes twinkle as she strokes the cover. She looks over at him, “You were never the thespian though, Gilbert.”

He laughs, still feeling the same thrill when he hears her say his name. “No, no I was not. Though maybe you could help with that.”

“Yes, well, with all of this room in this fancy new schoolhouse, I would love to!” She smiled at the building around them, so different from what they had known. 

The room they were in, Gilbert’s classroom, was generally the same as the one they had frequented as children, but rebuilt from the ground up. There were also new additions to the building as the population demanded it. Two more classrooms branched out from the back room that served as a private office space for teachers. One room for the smaller, younger children, another for the kids, and his, for the teens and preteens. Working with that age group hadn’t been Gilbert’s first choice. He remembered what he was like at that age, and what all of his friends were like, and he wasn’t sure he could handle it. But when the position opened up, he couldn’t not take it.

“Yes, well…” She continues looking around the classroom, a sadness that only Gilbert can see in her eyes. “I’ll let you get to it, important day.”

“You can stay,” Gilbert almost whines, not wanting her to go.

“It’s your first day, Mr. Blythe!” She says, already making her way towards the door. “I don’t want to be a distraction. I’ll stay another day, I promise. You’ll do great. I trust no one more than you to stimulate the young minds that will shape our future.”

His heart squeezes as she gave him one last smile before walking out of the door. Gilbert takes a deep breath, steadying himself for the day ahead of him. Her faith in him made the nerves fade, made the anxiety weaken. Because he knew, if Anne Shirley-Cuthbert believed in something, it was something good.

-

True to her word, Anne came back and sat in on class the very next day. There was an empty chair at a desk in the back corner of the room that Anne took. The girl who shared the desk started the day as nervous as Gilbert had ever seen anyone around Anne, but by lunch the two of them were fast friends. It turns out Anne hadn’t outgrown her childhood ways and spent a good portion of the day whispering things to make the girl giggle beside her. Too happy that she was there, though, Gilbert never reprimanded them.

“That girl is a delight, we would have been great friends when I was her age,” Anne sighs wistfully, leaning against Gilbert’s desk.

“Well if you don’t stop making her giggle during instruction, she is going to meet the same fate as you and Diana the day Miss Stacy gave that pop quiz on equations,” Gilbert’s eyebrow quirks up at her as he pulls a chair towards her.

She narrows her eyes at him before sinking into it, “I’ll have you know, Diana and I were having a very important conversation that day.”

“About me?” Gilbert jokes, sitting down in his own chair across from her and pulling out his lunch. When Anne didn’t answer, though, he looks up.

He could just see a blush spreading across her freckled cheeks as she avoided eye contact.

“You were!” Gilbert exclaims.

“I most certainly was not!” Anne says, still looking anywhere but at Gilbert as he laughs at her clear embarrassment. “I wasn’t!”

“What were you guys talking about, Carrots?” Gilbert leans forward, easily falling into old teasing habits. “Was it my roguish good looks? My skinny little arms and insane hair?”

Anne scoffs, picking at the sleeve of her dress. Gilbert could just make out the words insufferable and ridiculous as she muttered under her breath. He smiles down at his apple, just the idea of Anne talking about him making his heartbeat staccato.

“Well, anyway, I thought your lesson went well,” Anne says in an attempt to change the subject. 

He concedes, though he couldn’t wipe the grin off of his face. “Thank you.”

“Though I must say, you could have a bit more emotion when you read Shakespeare. It’s Shakespeare.”

And so their lunch went, her impressing upon him the importance of theatrics while he just listened, content with having her there.

-

They develope a routine quickly. Anne sneaks in and takes the first empty chair she can find. She watches his lessons and smiles at him when he let himself catch her eye. Gilbert has lunch in her company and continues with his lessons until he feigns an excuse to stay later and later every day.

“You really must get home, Gilbert,” Anne says one night, the flames burning low in his lamp.

“I like being here,” Gilbert looks over at her then. “With you.”

Anne only looks away from him and out the window, sadness deep in her eyes. They sit in a heavy silence for a moment, before Anne speaks again, voice barely a whisper.

“What was my funeral like?”

Gilbert sucks in a deep breath. So they were going to talk about it, then. The unavoidable topic they had been avoiding since he saw her again for the first time. Anne Shirley-Cuthbert was dead. She had perished in a schoolhouse fire last year.

“It was…” Gilbert looks away from her, trying to find the words. Her funeral had been one of the hardest things he had ever gone through, up there with the death of both of his parents. “It was like the final nail in my own coffin.”

Gilbert feels Anne look over at him, not saying a word.

“All my life, I’ve buried the people I love,” with that, he looks over at her. He could just see the tears spilling over her translucent cheeks. “You’d think I’d be better at it…”

They sit staring at each other across his desk. She was only shades of silver now, and that’s what he misses the most. Anne Shirley-Cuthbert had been vibrant in life. Fiery red hair, sparkling blue eyes, features he had memorized long ago. He ached to see the sun catch her braids one more time. All he saw now were shadows from his lamp flicker through her and onto the back of the chair she sat in.

“Do you remember much of that day?” Gilbert finally whispers, the question that had haunted him from the moment he saw her float through the door in the back of his classroom.

“No…” Anne says, eyes lost in her own memories. “All I remember is hearing a loud crash behind me. That’s it… Thankfully.”

Gilbert breathes a sigh of relief. He remembers that day vividly, reliving it constantly while awake and then again in his dreams. On the good nights, he saves her. On the bad ones, he watches as the roof of the schoolhouse falls with Anne below it again and again.

The schoolhouse had caught fire in the middle of one of Anne’s lessons. They still aren’t sure what caused it. The fire swept the old rickety building quickly and ferociously. By the time Gilbert had arrived with buckets in hand, the schoolhouse was practically engulfed. Anne had managed to get the children out, all except one who had ran back in to save his stuffed rabbit. Anne followed when she realized he was gone, no matter how much Gilbert yelled at her to stop. The child made it out. Anne did not. Gilbert can still feel the ache in his chest as he watched the building fall. She didn’t scream, but he did.

“Why don’t they visit you?” Gilbert asks. He didn’t need to clarify who, she knew what he meant. He had felt guilty, when he realized he had never seen Marilla, Matthew, or Diana at the schoolhouse in the weeks since Anne had shown up. But he realized if Anne wanted them to be there, they would have been. It wasn’t his secret to share.

Anne wipes a tear from her pale cheek, staring down at his desk.

“They have lives, I can’t ask them to waste them away with me here. Matthew was already sick before I...” she trails away, eyes shadowed. “I didn’t want to make him or Marilla worse. And Diana should be able to live, to be happy. I already feel bad enough making you spend your days in this schoolhouse.”

“There is nowhere else I would rather be,” Gilbert says resolutely, placing his hand on top of hers as much as he could. It was only cold air where they touched, but if he concentrated hard enough, he could feel the ghost of her skin.

-

“Gilbert, that answer is perfectly acceptable!” Anne admonishes him from above his shoulder.

“Carrots, almost right isn’t right,” Gilbert shakes his head as he continued scribbling his corrections.

Anne huffs beside him. She often watched him grade tests and he always felt like he was being judged as much as his students. He smiles to himself, knowing he was probably being harsher than he should.

“You are just another Mr. Phillips!”

Gilbert turns to Anne, his mouth agape. “I take great offense to that!”

She smirks at him, “Well maybe you shouldn’t be so mean to your pupils.”

“Take it back, I am nothing like Mr. Phillips!” Gilbert insists.

“Fine fine, you are nothing like Mr. Phillips…” Anne stands from where she was leaned against his desk. She walks around him, her hand trailing on his chest, leaving a trail of goosebumps inter wake. “You are far better looking,” she whispers in his ear.

Gilbert could only stare at where she had been, shivers running down his spine.

-

His students warm up to having a ghost haunting their classroom very quickly. While they had all been wary of her at first, by the time September come around, Gilbert often finds his students picking up an extra textbook for her and flipping their pages together. Gilbert knew Anne read much faster than they did, but it still warmed his heart to watch her reread a page 2 or 3 times instead of asking them to flip the page sooner.

During their reading of Hamlet they all emphatically insist she plays the ghost, no matter how cliché a choice it is. She smiles and does a beautiful job, feigning a deep voice with her signature dramatic flair. They laugh at the right moments and cheer when she recites her parts perfectly, having memorized the play from books left open. Gilbert may or may not leave the books on the desks at night just so she will have something to do while he is gone.

-

“You spend far too much time at this school,” Anne says one night while Gilbert pretends to write lesson plans just to stay with her.

“Well now I have heard it all,” Gilbert says not looking up. “Anne Shirley-Cuthbert telling someone they are at school too much.”

She giggles, and he looks up. She stands beside him where he sits, looking up at his notes on the blackboard. He watches as sadness flicks across her face. Even noncorporeal, she wears her emotions on her sleeves. He just waits, knowing she will tell him what's bothering her whenever she's ready to.

“I don’t want you to haunt these halls like I do,” she whispers finally.

Gilbert stands, looking down at her. He wishes more than anything he could remember the color of the dress she was wearing the day of the fire. It would make pretending she was actually here much easier.

She looks up at him finally, eyes wet. “Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean you should be, too.”

Gilbert brings his hands up, cupping her face. Goosebumps radiate from where her hands grab the back of his arms. Even without their ocean blue hues, Gilbert could drown in the depths of her eyes. They meet in the middle, her lips dancing across his. It isn’t like it was years ago, the feeling between them more cold burning intensity than hot waves. But it’s nice anyway, to have her here in his arms.

“I think I can feel you, sometimes,” he whispers against her lips.

-

They don’t talk about the kiss again, but Gilbert quickly realizes Anne is far more forward and flirtatious in the afterlife than she ever was before.

“Are you staring at me, Carrots?” Gilbert says while writing out assignments on the board one morning. He can always feel her presence before he sees her. Not just because of her ghostly form; Anne has just always had that effect on him.

“And if I am?” She replies from somewhere behind him.

Gilbert smiles to himself, trying to finish his sentence on the board. “Do you like what you see?” Gilbert says, hoping to embarrass her the way he used to in school.

“Oh, yes,” she answers immediately, surprising him. “Me and the other schoolyard ghosts often discuss the handsomeness of one Mr. Blythe.”

He whips around to face her, his mouth open. She only laughs at his surprise.

“What are you more shocked about, the other ghosts or your attractiveness?”

Gilbert only sputters in response.

“Oh don’t get a big head, Gilbert. I’m dead, maybe I’m just desperate,” Anne says before throwing him a wink and disappearing through a wall.

-

“I feel selfish, having you here all to myself,” Anne says one day while Gilbert eats his lunch.

Most times they just sit in companionable silence, both of them reading. Gilbert has gotten a grasp on how quickly she reads and works to read faster so he can flip their pages at the same time. Today, however, she is in a peculiar mood. He felt her eyes on him the moment he started reading, knowing she had something on her mind.

“I do work here, Anne,” Gilbert hedges.

“You know what I mean.”

Gilbert only shrugs in reply, pretending to not know where she is going with this.

“Surely your girlfriend doesn’t appreciate all the extra hours you put in at work,” Anne says.

When Gilbert snaps his head over to her, she is feigning disinterest, picking at her nails. “What girlfriend?”

She rolls her eyes, still not looking at him. “Oh, don’t tell me you aren’t dating.”

Gilbert sets his book down, anger brewing. “I’m not.”

“You should be,” Anne says, eyes all fiery determination now.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“You know why not,” Gilbert says, staring into her eyes. He is breathing heavy now, irritated at her insistence.

“Don’t be ridiculous-” Anne starts.

“I’m not being ridiculous! You’re being ridiculous!” Gilbert almost shouts, not caring how childish he sounds.

Anne jumps up, the chair she was in not moving. “Gilbert, I can’t be what you need!”

“I don’t need-”

“I can’t hold you, I can’t write you notes, I can’t have a home with you, I can’t have your children-” Anne’s voice cracks on the last word, her sadness finally spilling through.

Gilbert stands now, his heart breaking at the devastation in her voice. “Anne, I don’t want any of that…”

She pulls away from him as he reaches out to her. “You say that now, Gilbert. But you will, eventually. You can’t love a ghost.”

Tears spill out of Gilbert’s own eyes, down his cheeks. “But I do.”

Anne only gives him a sad smile, rubbing her thumb across his cheek, replacing the warmth of the tear with shivers from her touch.

And if the students notice their teacher’s bloodshot eyes and the absence of their schoolhouse ghost the rest of the day, they don’t say anything.

-

He can tell she is avoiding him, but he doesn’t want to say anything to make her angry and leave completely. She still watches his lessons, whispering into his students’ ears. They spend lunch together, but she always spends less and less time with him at night. He knows she thinks this is what he needs, but she couldn’t be more wrong. He needs to see Anne more than he needs air, he thinks. He had taken this job solely to be closer to her. He hadn’t known she was haunting the schoolhouse when he accepted, of course, but even if she wasn’t here, Anne’s essence blanketed the walls of those classrooms.

Anne was in the books on the shelves, whose authors ranged in ethnicity and gender, thanks to her outspokenness on diverse education. She was even the first thing he saw when he arrived at work, a dedication plaque to her nailed into the front door. Most of all, though, Gilbert could see Anne in the memories of the schoolhouse. Even though the desks are new, he still smiles to himself, thinking about how she looked sitting in her desk on that first day; moments before cracking her slate over his head. When the sun glints through the windows, he saw the silhouette he had memorized years ago. When he hears a chair scrape against the floor, his mind brought him back to her jumping up to recite poetry. She was everywhere and nowhere. He was stuck on the tightrope between life and death, not liking what he saw on either side.

After a few days of her avoidance, he stays late in his classroom, staring at nothing. Back against the wall, arms on his knees, thinking about nothing but regrets and words left unsaid.

“I know you’ve been avoiding me,” Gilbert says aloud to the empty room.

A sigh comes from the other end of the classroom, just before Anne glides through the wall from another classroom. 

“I know you think this is what’s best for me, Anne, but it’s not,” Gilbert continues, finally looking at her.

Sadness runs deep through her eyes and she looks like both the young girl he once knew and a woman wise beyond her years all at once. Dust mites float through the air around her as she stands next to his desk, illuminated by the lantern flickering on his desk.. He had a whole speech planned, had rehearsed it in his head all day, but, as always, words fail him when he looks at her.

“I’m sorry,” is all he says, floating on a whisper between them.

“Gilbert,” Anne says, voice breaking. “Don’t say that. Don’t be sorry for anything.”

Gilbert furiously swipes at his eyes as she crouches beside where he is slouched on the floor. “There are so many things I never said, so many things I wish I could take back…”

“Me too, Gilbert,” she grabs his hand away from his face, making him look at her. When he finally does, she is crying too, eyes too open, too blue, too vulnerable. The crack in his heart grows deeper. “Why do you think I’m here?”

They sit like that for a second, the silence growing deeper between them. 

“Do you know what today is?” Anne whispers.

“Halloween?”

“Yes, All Hallow’s Eve…” Anne looks away from him for a second. “When the veil between worlds is at its thinnest.”

Gilbert only looks at her, not understanding her point. But then he does. Because, he realizes as he looks at her, that he can see her. Actually see her. The blue of her eyes, the gold and orange and red flames of her hair. The blonde tips at the end of her eyelashes. The beautiful shades of freckles across her skin. He gasps, reaching up to touch her face. It’s warm and solid, here in front of him.

Her tears roll across his thumb as she laughs, holding his hands to her. “It’s only temporary, Gilbert.”

“How… why…” Incoherent thoughts float through his mind as he memorizes every inch of her again, sitting in front of him. Her dress had been a light blue. Robin’s egg, she had told him once. It was one of her favorites. His too.

“Because it’s time,” she whispers.

Gilbert stares into her eyes as his their hands fall between them, clinging to each other. She doesn’t say anything else as he grapples with the truth.

“But I don’t want to,” he whispers, mere inches between them.

It’s not pity in her eyes, no, it’s understanding. She doesn’t want to either. “You have to let me go, Gilbert.”

Finally, Gilbert blurts out the dark thought that had been bubbling in his heart since the moment he saw her.

“What if I go with you?” Gilbert clings to her hands, desperate for the warmth of them, desperate for her to stay, desperate for her.

Anne’s brows furrow, “What do you mean?”

“I could…” Gilbert looks away for a second, not wanting to say it. “I could… be with you.”

Anne coils back as if he’s struck her, snatching her hands from his. “Don’t say that,” she says in a cutting whisper. “Gilbert Blythe don’t ever say that to me. Don’t you ever think that again.”

Eyes downcast, Gilbert doesn’t say anything. His breath catches in his throat as she tugs his chin up, her eyes all fire. “I have lost too many people. You have lost too many people. You are meant for great things, Gilbert Blythe, and you will not do the world a disservice by leaving it to chase a ghost.”

“I’m sorry…” he whispers, grabbing her hands again. “I just… I don’t care for a world without you in it.”

It’s Anne’s turn to look away from the intensity of his gaze, tears spilling over the lashes he could reach up and touch.

“You just…” She looks back at him then. “You just have to believe, in your heart, for just a second, that there is a better place for me than where I am. That… moving on… is what’s best for me.”

He wants to refuse, to be selfish. To tell her she has to stay here, with him. Instead, his hands reach up and pull her face to him, their foreheads resting against each other. Auburn waves rolling through his fingers. Soft skin beneath where his thumb ghosts across her cheekbone. Heat where her hands grip his forearms. Her breath against his lips. Lavender in his nose. Despair, physically painful heartbreak, at the thought of losing her but also at the thought of her being stuck between worlds. 

“I love you,” he whispers, screwing his eyes shut.

“I know,” she sayss against his lips before placing one final kiss, the ghost of her breath leaving his skin forever.

**Author's Note:**

> I am... so sorry.
> 
> This fic was completely inspired by Kiss Me, Haunt Me, Kill Me, a Dramione fic by the AMAZING LovesBitca8. I have been working on this for over a year? and I am so sorry that my first fic in forever is this depressing piece of work. BUT I HOPE YOU GUYS LIKED THE PAIN! As always, please leave kudos, please leave reviews, please yell at me.


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